New Right-Wing Israeli PM Has Left-Wing Berkeley Ties

BERKELEY, CA — The right-wing head of a new Israeli coalition government has ties to left-wing Berkeley, Business Insider reports.

Naftali Bennett was sworn in as Israel’s new prime minister Sunday in a power-sharing agreement with centrist leader Yair Lapid that includes a wide coalition of groups that moved to unseat Benjamin Netanyahu, the disgraced longtime prime minister who has been indicted on three corruption charges.

Bennett’s parents, Myrna and Jim Bennett, are both UC Berkeley graduates who embraced the city’s leftist leanings while living in the East Bay city according to the report.

The Bennett’s political attitudes shifted when they moved to Israel in the early 1970s and embraced nationalist parties.

"In the US, we were against the Vietnam War. We went to Berkeley. We were automatically like left-wingers,” Myrna Bennett told Haaretz, and Israeli news outlet.

“When we came to Israel, I felt I loved the place I was living in."

Naftali Bennett, who was born in Haifa in 1972, heads the ultra-nationalist Yamina party.

Bennett emerged to power despite being stalked by persistent questions about his role while serving in the military in a massacre that killed 106 Lebanese civilians.

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